© Rabbi David L. Kline
http://good-to-be-a-jew.blogspot.com/
TELLING TANACH
When
it comes to conveying culture, and, in particular, religion, nothing approaches
the effectiveness of stories.
Anecdotes entertain and leave an impression. We are ready to hear about ancestors or current events, real
or imaginary, and we come away thinking.
Imagine
reading or listening to that story of brotherly hate, Kayin and Hevel, commonly
(and, unfortunately, obscuring etymology) referred to as “Cain and Abel.” “As is,” we come away wondering about
God, about family, about anger, about life and death. But the rabbis, intent on applying Torah to their world,
told the story differently: there was something wrong with Kayin’s offering or
perhaps his attitude. God was
right to reject such a gesture in favor of his brother’s. Kayin did not suffer
capital punishment because no one had taught him not to murder. The rabbis,
(the teachers, beginning in the century before the Common Era) following Aesop,
liked stories to have a moral, so, they commented on the stories and added
details: midrash (מדרש, meaning “interpretation,” from the root דרש,
“searching” for meaning). Over millennia of telling, midrash became better known to Jews than
Tanach, but there is literary and
moral value in the unadorned work of our early ancestors and that is what I
favor in this essay.
For
the early rabbis, Tanach was–and for many, still is–accepted as word of God,
communicated via inspired individuals.
In contemplating any line, plain reading–they called it p’shat, פשט, “simple”–took into account
that every word is weighty, ultimate, and
correct. P’shat implies and invites midrash. Utilizing midrash, homey and ahistorical, the rabbis framed Judaism as we
know it, a leap forward from the sacrificial cult of Tanach times.
Those
of us who are skeptical, agnostic, or deniers of revelation are nevertheless
interested in Tanach. It is, after all, our story. The terms p’shat and midrash serve
to introduce us to the rabbis and their pious thinking about the ancient words. We need a term by which to refer to the
text as written, a prerabbinic approach to what was meant by the authors and
understood by their audience. I
suggest pashut, פשוט, the common Hebrew word for
“simple,” in place of the Aramaic p’shat
preferred by the rabbis. When we
read pashut we can be open minded as
to whether these are the words of God or words about God. We can feel free to agree or disagree,
to approve or disapprove, to accept or reject.
It
is, of course, not simple for us to reach back over the millennia to the pashut. Tanach is nearly the sole document we have for the period
between roughly 1500 and 200 BCE from our people in its land. Ancient Babylonia, where scribes wrote
on clay, has libraries full of documents, literary, legislative, business,
family records, so we know more about its historical events, culture, language
and literary development. Babylonian
writings shed some light on Tanach.
Reading material from a decade or a century ago can be difficult because
we are distant from the context.
Hoping to grasp truly ancient writing is a stretch. Hence the helpful hypothesis.
Traditional
belief held–and still holds, for many–that the Five Books of Moses are God’s
word to that leader.
Critical reading (as in critical thinking) gave rise, beginning a couple
of centuries ago, to the Documentary Hypothesis that Torah was composed late in
the period of the monarchy and during and after the Babylonian exile. The great 8th century BCE
prophets, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, preceded and influenced the writing. Deuteronomy is the first Sefer Torah to
appear, towards the end of the 7th century (see 2 Kings 22:8). The
narratives of Genesis and Exodus, rooted in oral tradition, were written into
documents in the 10th century but not “published” till the 5th
century, along with the legislative chapters of Torah (see Ezra’s presentation,
Nehemiah 8:1-8). Lacking signed manuscripts and corroborating evidence, the
hypothesis remains unproven but it makes sense of the received text.
Midrash is the standard and familiar way of telling
Tanach. By contrast, a critical
approach takes us to an earlier stage and opens us to behaviors and ideas that
help us know ourselves. Here are
two readings of the Akedah, the
“Binding of Yitschak,” one of the most challenging narratives in Tanach
(Genesis 22).
Avraham,
our founding father, receives a call from God, Who is testing him, to make a
burnt offering of Yitschak his son.
The father is willing and nearly completes the act when word comes to
desist. Such exemplary behavior
led to the selection of the story as the Rosh Hashanah Torah reading. Midrash
richly adds to the story–by way of illustration, two points, first: Yitschak
participates in the obedience as indicated by the repetition (verses 6,8) in
the story of the two of them walking “together.” Yitschak asks for the “binding” out of fear that he not lie
completely still for the neat and quick slaughtering stroke necessary for a
proper offering. Second: God tested Avraham (cf: Job) the way God tests each of
us, but more severly. Avraham
passed the test and God rewarded him with a blessing. How many sermons, essays,
books have been written about the spiritual height of total devotion,
submission, and obedience? About
the virtue of one generation ready to sacrifice the lives of the next
generation for a higher value?
Without such a virtue how could nations make war with one another?
For
the critical reader this is a legend in which two literary elements stand
out. First, the assumption, for
purposes of the story, that God issued explicit commands to the ancients. In
the author’s time, only prophets–specialists, professionals–could claim to hear
directly from God. The narrator is further willing to portray Avraham as
experiencing something that no contemporary–of the author–could legitimately
claim, namely a divine demand for a human sacrifice, filicide.
Second,
this is a story of non-compliance with what may have been, in the eyes of our
storied founder, a demonstration of devotion–a misguided demonstration, because
either it was only a test or it was a mistaken assumption on the part of
Avraham. One can appreciate the words from on high as a device used by the author
to justify the outlandish act.
Child sacrifice was not unheard of in the first and second millennia
BCE, and our author may have based his short story on an oral tale.
Deuteronomy
(12:30f, 18:10) and Leviticus (18:21, 20:3) refer to child sacrifice as
the hateful practice of pagans, to other gods. The Akedah story
may have served to teach that God does not really want human sacrifice, that
animal sacrifice suffices. The
founding father can be understood as primitive in his response to the test. He may have passed and been rewarded,
but for any of us to respond in kind would be to fail the test. Rosh Hashanah is a sensitive moment and
a story can be particularly effective.
It is important to choose how we tell it.
In
an essay on the Genesis creation stories, “The First Week” and “The Garden of
Eden,” I argue that the two express differing worldviews. The former sees the
world as orderly, purposeful, and perfect. The latter sees chaos and error with, nevertheless, an
imminent, hands on deity. The old stories are pleasurable and memorable. Without buying into ancient thinking we
can delight in our ancestors’ efforts to explain the world as they knew
it. Their metaphors still hold up,
e.g. “Let there be light,” “Garden of Eden.” Their conceptions of reality stand with the best of the
Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks. (http://good-to-be-a-jew.blogspot.com/2008/01/looking-twice-at-world-rabbi-david-l.html).
The
rabbis were (and mostly still are) committed to preserving the patriarchs,
Moshe, Kings David and Sh’lomo, Eliahu and a few other prophets as sacred
heroes of morality, models for oncoming generations. During a brief sojourn as student at Y’shivat Mir in
Jerusalem, my instructor, himself a kolel
(“graduate”) student, described Avraham as the saintliest of saints. Every succeeding generation became a
degree less saintly, so that today our best rank low next to such giants of
goodness. A line in Deuteronomy reads like a precursor of the rabbis, saying that God rewarded
the nation for the merit of their patriarch (9:4-6). Midrash promotes humility.
Pashut readers of the narrative, on the
other hand, will find themselves in the world of ancestors, confronting them as
if they were living characters.
It’s like reading a travel book, with some scenes charming, others
inhospitable, some folks friendly, others threatening. It’s like reading a historical novel
about our family. And telling the
stories this way makes you a colleague of the long ago author.
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